Flamenco Fire

Flamenco Guitar
Rasgueado For Classical Guitar

"Flamenco -
A style of instrumental or vocal music originating in southern Spain and
intensely rhythmic..."

The Rasgueado is
an exciting technique that gives the classical guitar player more flair and fire
than they are normally exposed. More fingerstyle guitarists should use these
techniques.

Ragueado means "to rake", and is a
very fast strumming technique accomplished by using the back of the nails of
the right hand. The right hand thumb could also be used, but generally it is
used to "anchor" the hand so that the fingers can perform the
percussive strumming. Some say that playing the rasgueado will help to develop
finger independence and I'm convinced as well that it's true. They can be hard
to perform, so it's advisable that you practice them very slowly at first.

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Back to Flamenco...

Here's how Scott Tennant suggests you should approach the playing of the rasgueado...

Notice how the fingers are basically "attacking" the strings in the first picture. The angle of approach helps with volume and the percussive effect you need to produce.

Guitar Maker
Sidebar - Did You Know?

These types of
guitars are constructed using different woods, have a thinner soundboard and a
shallower body than the classical guitar. This is to help its peculiar tonal
qualities of warm tone and greater "attack" than the classical guitar
but leads to a shorter sustain of notes.

Scott Tennant
illuminates us about the use of the thumb techniques where he writes in Pumping
Nylon...

"Included in
the bottomless bag of tricks of these guitarists is the way they use their
thumbs. Far from trickery, though, the thumb is used mostly out of necessity.
The guitarist must be heard through all the singing, hand-clapping, and the
piercing footwork....Although not always directly applicable to the classical
repertoire, practicing some of the techniques will expand our
capabilities."

The "alzapua
is another technique that belongs to this type of guitar. According to the
website novareinna.com which is a glossary site, an alzapua is described as...

"A playing
technique which uses the right hand. The thumb is used to play down-and-up
strokes across one or a group of strings in combination with apoyando single
notes. It may be that this technique developed as an imitation of the manner in
which the medieval Arabic 'ud (a form of lute) was played with a wooden
plectrum."

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A Bit About Me...

Welcome to LCG! I'm Trevor Maurice, owner of this site. I hope you find inspiration in these pages to help you with your journey of learning to play the classical guitar. You can read more of my story here...